Security elements, in particular removable security elements such as smart cards, are widely used in secure communication systems to provide conditional access to services such as banking services and television transmission services. A major concern associated with conditional access in which embedded or removable security elements are used is cloning of genuine security elements through which unauthorized users may gain access to services provided to authorized users. Finding ways to prevent such cloning of genuine security elements is therefore considered as highly desired.
Some aspects of technologies and related art that may be useful in understanding the present invention are described in Chapter 5 of Handbook of Applied Cryptography, by Alfred J. Menezes, Paul C. van Oorschot and Scott A. Vanstone, CRC Press LLC, 1997, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference.